Drowning

Chapter Four - White Knight, Tarnished Armour

Every day for the next two weeks, Duncan repeated the actions of the day after he met Yanna Morgan. He had a tendency to become stuck in time, acting on habit rather than out of thought.

He would wake up sometime after noon and fortify himself with a liquid breakfast. Then he would put on his jacket and shades and head down to the library where he would sit, rain or shine, on a bench across the street reading some lousy, beat-up paperback or another until Yanna Morgan got off work. Then he would shadow her home for no good reason except that he wanted to. Once she was safe at home, he would find a pub, order wings and drinks, complete his only meal of the day and then go home.

As the weeks drew on, the evening portion of Duncan's day grew more varied, at least in terms of his internal life. Despite his best efforts to silence and numb his brain most of the time, he still had the instincts of a literary critic and a strategist, and he read Yanna's walk home with all the attention he'd pay to a masterwork.

He noted her clothes and drew conclusions about her life from that. At first blush, she subscribed to the same hipster-chic that half of downtown Vancouver did, but on closer inspection she had her own Victorian-librarian style to her, more sophisticated and adventurous than a first look revealed. She never wore make-up, though some days she wore rimless glasses. She walked quickly and confidently with an unmistakable beat to her stride, as if marching to unheard music. Sometimes she would stop and watch something or someone for no other reason than to experience them, and she wasn't afraid to laugh or sigh out loud to nobody at all.

He took his observations home with him. His respect for her grew, and his interest in her did as well. No matter how hard he looked, watched and wondered, she refused to disappoint him. She was confident, fearless, independent, smart, beautiful, quirky, eccentric, silly and dignified.

Conversely, the more he came to like her, the rougher his evenings became. He'd come home in a silent panic, overwhelmed by guilt, self-loathing or doubt. He'd remember that he was stalking a girl he'd only spoken to once. He was making assumptions with no concrete basis. Forming a - he'd admit it - attachment to an idea that he'd spent ten years trying to drown. He was succumbing to a lie, a dream, a fantasy.

And then, if he shrugged that off, there was the reality that he was who he was: a fuckup with nothing whatsoever to offer a girl. There was virtually no way he could ever risk taking a chance on her. She'd kick him to the curb before the words got out of his mouth. What was the appeal of that scenario? But his new routine was exasperating things, making his desire for her stronger, which made him even more revolted with himself. By the end of week two he was drinking himself to sleep every night, not a new occurrence but for its regularity. He just sat in dark silence in the corner, trying to wash her out of his mind with scotch and whiskey and succeeding only in dwelling on her with increased intensity.

Monday of week three came around and with it, change. At 6pm, when Yanna would normally emerge from the library building, no Yanna appeared. Duncan waited an hour, and another, growing increasingly uneasy. He should have packed up and gone home, he knew, but something in his gut told him to stay put, or maybe he was just being obsessive. It grew dark early, and it ws pitch-black out by 9pm when Yanna finally appeared. The downtown commuter crowds had vanished, the streets were sparsely populated, and Duncan had found a new spot to wait, one darker and better hidden. He felt like a total creep, but couldn't help himself. He watched as Yanna got the usual distance on him, and then took off after her, as usual. Only this time, when he'd rounded the first corner he found Yanna being hailed by another man emerging from the library's side-door.

#

"Rhiannon! Miss Morgan!" Yanna looked to her left with surprise and smiled to see one of the building managers, a man they called Squire, hailing her. Squire was an older man, maybe in his early forties, but tall and handsome in his own, plain way. He clearly enjoyed working in a library even if his responsibilities were administrative and bureaucratic. They'd had some good conversations on philosophy, literature and the like. Squire pretended to a sort of sophistication that washed only if you were not especially sophisticated yourself. Those impressed by his faux-class called him Squire in reverence; those undeceived used it ironically. Yanna thought he was sweet, if a bit of an ass.